1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to card games, specifically to a playing aid utilized by individual players in connection with those games involving competitive play from concealed card hands, such as Bridge, Gin Rummy and Pinochle.
2. Description of Prior Art
The ability to divine the make-up of cards held concealed in an opponent's hand during game play, known as card reading, is a skill essential for consistent winning at card games since such knowledge of card holdings prior to exposure during play provides the indispensible guide to effective play. At the present time, card reading methods require of a player highly developed personal powers of memorization and mental manipulation of individual cards and their individual circumstances of play. This is so largely because each concealed card has varying degrees of location uncertainty, all of which must be simultaneously visualized and adjusted as game play progresses.
The mental powers required for such nynamic visualizatons are typically beyond the abilities of most players. consequently the essential advantage of card reading is denied to most players.
Heretofore in the field of card games, the prior art has not been applied to remedy this denial but has been directed only towards providing the means for working out card game problems involving preset deals where all card holdings can be seen by all players; the prior art has ben used primarily as an educational tool to train players by practise to select effective strategies and tactics of game play under a given card distribution. For this purpose the means claimed in the prior art comprise game piece substitutes for real cards which are adapted for positioning on a game board in a miniature recreation of game play at a table; no means are claimed for accounting for the uncertainty of concealed card locations which are an essential ingredient of card reading. The prior art offers no workable means whereby a player could actually perform card reading during game play without the burdens of memorization.
The present invention is developed to enable the player to easily establish and display for his private use the make-up of card hands held concealed from him during an actual card game, free of memorization or other mental manipulaton. This device is based on a unique approach to card reading in which characteristic parameters of card holdings are used in the place of specific individual card identification such that a single parameter can describe multiple characteristics. Thereby a relatively few indicators can provide card reading information in a stored display already correlated for direct reading of cars held in conceald hands. The resultant device can be used with little training or skill.